Missionaries, Our Country, The Lost, and Unreached People Groups

In our SWI class, Mary Mohler shared with us her prayer routine. Of course she said that we all have to do what works for us, but I really liked her suggestions. First, get a three subject notebook. A cheap one! In the first section, write your Bible study/quiet time notes and reflections. In the second section, make a list of prayer requests. Just start with number one and number them all through the whole section. Cross prayers off as they are answered. This section should be for those people we tell, so casually sometimes, "I'll pray for you!" It should be all the urgent prayer requests about illnesses, injuries, etc. Mary said she was in the 8,000's in her list. I'm already on #30. In the third section do the same thing but with praise reports.

On the back panel of the notebook write out the days of the week and pray for a different thing each day. For example: Sundays could be prayer for your church, missionaries you know, ministries you're involved with or that have been put on your heart. Monday could be prayers for your extended family. Tuesday could be prayers for your immediate family (of course, you should pray for your immediate family every day, but it's good to have a time of real, concentrated prayer, too). Anyway, you get the picture. Today, for me, is the day I pray for missionaries, our country, the lost in general, and unreached people groups.

And what do you know, the Big Life newsletter came to me this morning. Check out this excerpt from John Piper.

Before we can begin to discuss the subject of prayer, we first must recognize that we are engaged in a war.

John Piper writes... "Most people show by their priorities and their casual approach to spiritual things that they believe we are in peacetime, not wartime.

In wartime, the newspapers carry headlines about how the troops are doing. In wartime, families talk about the sons and daughters on the front lines, and write to them, and pray for them with heart-wrenching concern for their safety. In wartime, we are on the alert. We are armed. We are vigilant. In wartime, we spend money differently - there is austerity, not for its own sake, but because there are more strategic ways to spend money than on new tires at home. The war effort touches everybody. We all cut back. The luxury liner becomes the troop carrier.

Very few people think that we are now in a war greater than World War II, and greater than any imaginable nuclear World War III. Or that Satan is a much worse enemy than Communism or militant Islam. Or that the conflict is not restricted to any one global theater, but is in every town and city in the world. Or that the casualties do not merely lose an arm or an eye or an earthly life, but lose everything, even their own soul and enter a hell of everlasting torment (Revelation 14:9-11).

Until people believe this, they will not pray as they ought. They will not even know what prayer is.

In Ephesians 6:17-18 Paul-makes the connection for us:
Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, with all prayer and supplication, Praying on every occasion in the Spirit, and keeping awake for this with all perseverance.

Prayer is the communication by which the weapons of warfare are deployed according to the will of God. Prayer is for war."